


the land of counterpane

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: Domestic Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-17 07:59:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16512377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: Clary Crowder meets Raylan when he's two days old. She can tell right from the first how good he's going to be.





	the land of counterpane

**Author's Note:**

> plasticities said something in a comment about Boyd's mother being a good influence, and I thought _yes_ and so wound up writing this ficlet where the boys are young. Title stolen from a Robert Louis Stevenson poem of the same name.

Clary meets Raylan Givens when he’s two days old, home from the hospital and taking in the world with wide, baby blue eyes. She’s bringing over a casserole, Boyd two months old and wrapped snug against her chest, his eyes already turning from blue to his daddy’s brown. Frances looks worn and radiant all at once, holds onto Raylan like she’s afraid she might break him if she squeezes too hard. Clary knows how she feels. It took her two long weeks to get Boyd’s diapers on right, and nearly as long to burp him without patting him like he was fine china instead of a baby boy.

Frances sets Raylan down on the bed and Clary unslings Boyd and lays him down beside. Boyd looks over and immediately stretches out his little hand, grabbing at the new thing next to him the way he grabs at everything these days: his daddy’s nose, his mama’s ears. Boyd likes to curl his fingers around things and hang on.

“You see that?” Clary says, once she’s assured Raylan’s safely out of reach of Boyd’s grabby hands. Raylan blinks up at her. He turns his head, rooting for his mama, probably, and winds up looking toward Boyd. “They’re gonna be friends.”

“They’re gonna be trouble,” Frances warns, huffing out a tired laugh. “Just you wait and see, Clary.”

“Nonsense.” Clary leans down and brushes Raylan’s fine hair off his forehead. It’s soft and blond and sticks straight up where it isn’t plastered to his forehead with sweat. She fights down a momentary pang of jealousy. Boyd’s hair is finally growing in, fuzz that she likes to brush her lips against when she sings him to sleep. “Look at them, Frannie. They’re perfect. Two perfect little boys, and they ain’t gonna be no trouble at all.”

Frances smiles, but there’s an incredulous edge to it. Clary shakes her head and smiles down at the two babies, Boyd still trying to stick his tiny fingers in Raylan’s squished face. “You ain’t gonna be no trouble at all,” she tells them, swoops down and kisses them both on their heads. “We’ll show your mama, Raylan Givens. We’ll show her how good you can be.” Raylan burbles, and the quiet little sounds soften the harsh edges of Frances’s smile.

“All right,” Frances allows. “I suppose we’ll see. But don’t you come crying to me, Clary Crowder, when they set fire to your drying shed.”

* * *

Clary thinks of that very moment, years later, when she’s standing with a bucket of water in the yard, hollering at her eldest for trying to set the house on fire while Raylan Givens stands beside him, looking apologetic and recalcitrant all at once.

“Mama, I was merely attempting to -”

Raylan elbows Boyd hard in the ribs, turns to look up at Clary. His eyes are brown now, same as her sons’, but they’re still as wide and limpid as they were when he was two days old. “We’re sorry, ma’am,” he says sincerely, ignores Boyd standing unrepentant at his side. “It won’t happen again.”

“Now, I –”

“Shut up, Boyd,” Raylan hisses, rounding on Clary’s son, his expression darkening in a way that reminds Clary of Frances, when she took on Arlo and the McClarens and the Sorensons and put the whole holler in their place. “And apologize to your mama for trying to burn down her home.”

“I wasn’t trying to …” Boyd trails off under the force of Raylan Givens’s glare, and Clary bites back a smile. “I’m terribly sorry, Mama,” Boyd recites dutifully, peering sideways at Raylan. “Rest assured, we won’t be attempting this particular feat again.”

Clary ain’t all that reassured. Last week Boyd tried to build a poor man’s grenade and set fire to the hydrangeas in the front yard. The month before that he convinced Bowman that God cast lightning down on little boys who picked their noses, and it took two weeks of nightmares and wetting the bed before Bowman told Clary that God killed nose pickers and booger eaters, took lightning and struck them down dead.

Boyd’s trouble, just like Frances said he would be, still reaching out and trying to grab everything he can see. He’s still perfect, of course, blond hair like her daddy’s was when he was a boy, before it went dark in his teens, never had time to go gray, blond hair and brown eyes and a smile that could charm the Devil himself.

Raylan’s a good boy, though. Clary knew he would be, even on that second day. He’s been staying with them for a week, both boys bedding down in sleeping bags on the living room floor. Boyd thinks Raylan’s staying because he’s been getting As at school, because the teacher hasn’t called home more than twice since the school year began. Boyd thinks that Raylan’s time is a reward for his good behavior, and Clary ain’t going to disabuse him of that notion.

She expects Raylan knows better. Frances dropped him off, this time, her eye already swelling shut and bruises in bracelets around her wrists. The last time Raylan had hiked over the hill to the Crowder house on his own, seven years old with his mama away at Nobles and his daddy beat to shit by one of their boys.

“Don’t you go picking any fights,” Frances had called after Raylan as he swung himself and his backpack out the passenger door, stomped off toward the front porch without saying good-bye.

“He won’t,” Clary promised, waving Frances on her way before Arlo would have time to follow. And it was true. Frances said Raylan was always picking fights as school, but he was as good as gold for Clary, helped her wash the dishes and picked up after himself and Boyd and didn’t pay no mind to Boyd and Bowman calling him a girl. (Well, he might have paid a little mind. The boys might have come in with skinned elbows and bloody lips, one afternoon, but Clary didn’t blame Raylan for that fight. Sometimes her boys needed a little sense knocked into their thick heads.)

Clary drops the bucket and sighs, fishes in her apron for her cigarettes. “Don’t think I ain’t telling your daddy about this when he gets home,” she warns Boyd, but it’s Raylan who whitens at the threat. “Now go on, go find your brother and wash up for dinner.”

“Come on, Raylan,” Boyd cries, sensing an escape route when one is presented to him. He stretches his hand out and tugs at Raylan’s elbow, Clary’s baby boy with his sticky fingers, grabbing at Raylan since he was born, reaching toward everything in and out of his reach. “Let’s go wash up.”

Clary swoops down and kisses them both on the tops of their heads, laughs when Boyd shrieks and tries to scrub the kiss away. They’re good boys, she thinks, lighting up a cigarette and watching as Boyd drags Raylan through the screen door. They’re perfect, just like she said.


End file.
